Retail business models have changed dramatically in the past decade. The advent of the Internet, and particularly the appearance of additional digital channels, such as mobile and social media channels, have changed the execution of the retail mix and, more importantly, shopper behavior. Business experts advocate a seamless, retail world where customers can shop across all of the channels in which businesses relate to their customers (such as Internet, mobile, radio, brick and mortar, print media and call center channels), anywhere, any time, and from any device. This type of multiple channel retailing is often referred to as Omni-Channel Retailing. See, for example, Norbert Beck and David Rygl, “Categorization of Multiple Channel Retailing in Multi-, Cross-, and Omni-Channel Retailing for Retailers and Retailing,” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Vol. 27, 170-78 (November 2015).
Ontologies have been used in different areas of computer science, such as artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing, Semantic Web, and software engineering, among others. In this context, the role of ontologies is to make the vocabularies used explicit and to provide an information-sharing standard. Indeed, ontologies provide a common model that allows software and applications to share data in a significant way. See, for example, Karin Breitman et al., Semantic Web: Concepts, Technologies and Applications (2007; Springer Verlag).
A need exists for improved techniques for integrating heterogeneous data comprised of, for example, telemetry, sensor data, video, audio, text and other formats of structured and unstructured data. A further need exists for improved techniques for integrating heterogeneous data using ontologies as a means to establish efficient information sharing among heterogeneous and distributed data sources.